Jean Antoine de Collaert

After the First French Empire absorbed the Kingdom of Holland, Collaert joined the French army as a general of brigade on 2 January 1811.[5] He was sent to the Illyrian Provinces where took command of the 1st Brigade of Alexis Joseph Delzons' 1st Division of the Observation Army of Italy. From 1811 until 1 April 1813 he commanded the garrison of Zadar (Zara). On 25 March 1813 he was appointed to lead a cavalry brigade in Germany. At his new assignment in Jean-Toussaint Arrighi de Casanova's III Cavalry Corps he served in Samuel-François Lhéritier's 5th Heavy Cavalry Division.[4]

Battle of Dresden, 26–27 August 1813

On 10 August 1813 the 5th Heavy Cavalry Division was transferred to the V Cavalry Corps and from that day until 5 October Collaert was the acting division commander.[3] During this period, he led the division at the Battle of Dresden on 26–27 August while Lhéritier led the corps. The division included the 2nd, 6th, 11th, 13th and 15th Dragoon Regiments and counted 61 officers and 851 troopers.[6] During the Battle of Leipzig on 16–19 October, Collaert led one brigade in Lhéritier's 1,700-strong 5th Heavy Cavalry Division with Pierre Claude Pajol commanding the corps. Collaert's brigade was made up of four squadrons of the 11th Dragoons, two squadrons of the 13th Dragoons and three squadrons of the 15th Dragoons.[7][note 1]

Formations of the Allied army of Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg began crossing the Rhine River at Basel on 21 December 1813. In the lead was an Austro-Bavarian raiding force of 700 cavalrymen led by Karl von Scheibler.[8] When he received news of the invasion, Marshal Claude Perrin Victor ordered Édouard Jean Baptiste Milhaud to take the 3,500 troopers of V Cavalry Corps and scout enemy movements.[9] On 23 December, now reinforced with two regiments of Don Cossacks, Scheibler's force moved north through Mulhouse. Meanwhile, his 200-man spearhead captured 12 artillery caissons, reached Colmar, learned Milhaud's corps was due the next day and fell back to join the main force.[10] On the morning of 24 December at Sainte-Croix-en-Plaine, Scheibler's 800 horsemen were routed by 1,000 French dragoons led by Gabriel-Gaspard Montélégier. As the Allies galloped to safety they found the two lead squadrons of Collaert's brigade blocking their escape route. Scheibler received three wounds but most of his force managed to cut its way out of the trap, suffering the loss of nine officers and about 200 troopers. French casualties were 80 but they recaptured the lost caissons. Though it was only a skirmish, Schwarzenberg became very cautious, believing that strong French forces were nearby.[11] In fact, Schwarzenberg's 75,000 soldiers vastly outnumbered Victor's 10,000.[12]

Samuel Lhéritier

On 25 March 1814, Collaert commanded the 5th Heavy Cavalry Division in Milhaud's cavalry corps. The division was made up of a 1,037-strong brigade that included the 2nd, 6th and 11th Dragoons and an 872-man brigade that counted the 13th and 15th Dragoons.[13] He led a brigade consisting of the 22nd and 25th Dragoons in Lhéritier's 6th Heavy Cavalry Division during the Battle of La Rothière on 1 February 1814.[14] Led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, 80,000 Allies defeated Napoleon's 45,000 French troops.[15] In response to the initial attack by Fabian Gottlieb von Osten-Sacken's Russian army corps, Lhéritier charged but was slowed by wet ground and stopped by intense artillery fire.[16] After heavy fighting, the division was employed in covering the retreat of the French army.[17]

At the Battle of Mormant on 17 February 1814, Napoleon's army encountered a Russian force of 2,500 infantry and 1,800 cavalry under Peter Petrovich Pahlen. The leading French formations arranged themselves into an arrow shape with Victor's infantry in the center. François Étienne de Kellermann led the right flank cavalry with the divisions of Lhéritier and Anne-François-Charles Trelliard while Milhaud led the left flank cavalry with the divisions of Hippolyte Piré and André Briche. Kellermann hurled Lhéritier's division at Pahlen's Cossacks while Trelliard went after the Russian infantry. Auguste Etienne Lamotte's brigade defeated two Cossack regiments, but when two more Cossack regiments appeared, Collaert's brigade charged and swept them away. Pahlen lost 2,114 infantry and one-third of his cavalry in the debacle. When the French cavalry pursuit reached Nangis it routed Anton Leonhard von Hardegg's Austrian division of the Allied V Corps. In the afternoon Lhéritier and Étienne Maurice Gérard's Paris Reserve combined to defeat the 3rd Bavarian Division in the combat of Valjouan.[18] At this time there was a reorganization of the cavalry so that on 20 February 1814, Collaert became the commander of the 2nd Brigade of Lhéritier's 4th Heavy Cavalry Division in Milhaud's V Cavalry Corps. The 2nd Brigade consisted of 616 horsemen from the 22nd and 25th Dragoons.[19]

The Battle of Saint-Dizier on 26 March 1814 was Napoleon's last victory, except for Ligny in 1815. Finding 10,000 Allied cavalry under Ferdinand von Wintzingerode drawn up in two lines west of Saint-Dizier, Napoleon crossed the Marne River and routed them, inflicting 1,500 casualties and capturing nine guns. While Trelliard's division pursued Wintzingerode's main body northeast toward Bar-le-Duc. Lhéritier's division chased Friedrich Karl von Tettenborn's Cossacks west to Perthes.[20] In the last muster on 15 April, Collaert's brigade in Lhéritier's division still included the 22nd and 25th Dragoons and counted 46 officers and 517 rank and file.[21] Under the Bourbon Restoration Collaert received the Order of Saint-Louis.[3]

Collaert joined the army of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, being promoted major general on 26 March 1815 and appointed lieutenant general of the field army's cavalry division on 21 April.[2] At the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, Collaert commanded the Dutch-Belgian Cavalry Division consisting of the 1st Brigade under Albert Dominicus Trip van Zoudtlandt, the 2nd Brigade led by Charles Étienne de Ghigny and the 3rd Brigade directed by Jean Baptiste van Merlen.[22] The 1st Brigade was composed of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Carabinier Regiments; the 2nd Brigade was made up of the 4th Light Dragoons and 8th Hussars; the 3rd Brigade comprised the 5th Light Dragoons and 6th Hussars. The 2nd, 5th and 8th Regiments were Belgian while the others were Dutch. The division was supported by the horse artillery half-batteries of Petter and Gey.[23] The Carabiniers were considered heavy cavalry[24] while the other four regiments were rated as light cavalry.[25]

British accounts of the battle minimized the efforts of the Dutch-Belgian cavalry. One historian noted that the overall Allied cavalry commander Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge placed himself at the front of a Dutch cavalry unit and ordered a charge, but none of the horsemen followed him. Incidents like this one caused many British officers to brand all Dutch soldiers as cowards. The author pointed out that chain-of-command and language problems may have been the real culprits in this particular case. Only that morning the Prince William of Orange placed the Dutch-Belgian cavalry under Uxbridge's command.[26] In fact, Dutch-Belgian cavalry losses were serious, with two regiments each losing more than 50 killed.[27]

The 1st Brigade was in reserve around noon but was sent into the fighting about 3:30 pm with the 1st Carabiniers leading.[24] Because the 5th Light Dragoons were roughly handled by French Chasseurs à Cheval at the Battle of Quatre Bras on 16 June, they were held in reserve on 18 June. Recruited in November 1814, the 8th Hussar Regiment under Louis Duvivier was made up of raw soldiers of French, Belgian and German nationalities. During the struggle at Waterloo, the 8th found itself face-to-face with the elite French Guard Horse Grenadiers. After an order given in Dutch threw the 8th Hussars into confusion, they were charged and put to flight by the Horse Grenadiers. Enough troopers rallied to form a single squadron which cooperated with the brigades of Hussey Vivian and John Ormsby Vandeleur later in the afternoon.[29]

At Waterloo, Collaert's foot was smashed by a musket ball.[3] On 8 July 1815, he received the Military William Order.[2] He was named commander of North Brabant province but died from the effects of his Waterloo wound on 17 June 1816 at Brussels.[3]

Footnotes

Citations

• Broughton, Tony (2006). "Generals Who Served in the French Army during the Period 1789 to 1814: Cervoni to Custine de Sarreck". The Napoleon Series. Retrieved 5 October 2013.
• Haythornthwaite, Philip (1974). Uniforms of Waterloo. New York, NY: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-88254-283-4.
• Howarth, David A. (1968). Waterloo: Day of Battle. New York, N.Y.: Atheneum.
• Leggiere, Michael V. (2007). The Fall of Napoleon: The Allied Invasion of France 1813–1814. Vol. 1. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87542-4.
• Nafziger, George (2015). The End of Empire: Napoleon's 1814 Campaign. Solihull, UK: Helion & Company. ISBN 978-1-909982-96-3.
• Nafziger, George (1990). "French Forces at Dresden 26/27 August 1813" (PDF). United States Army Combined Arms Center. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
• North, René (1971). Regiments at Waterloo. London, U.K.: Almark Publishing Co. ISBN 0-85524-025-3.
• Petre, F. Loraine (1994) [1914]. Napoleon at Bay: 1814. London: Lionel Leventhal Ltd. ISBN 1-85367-163-0.
• Smith, Digby (1998). The Napoleonic Wars Data Book. London: Greenhill. ISBN 1-85367-276-9.
• Van der Aa, A. J. (1852). "Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden: Collaert (Jean Antoine de)". Haarlem: J. J. Van Brederode. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
• Van Uythoven, Geert (2013). "Cavalry Officers of the Netherlands (Serving from 1813 to 1815): Caïmo to Cruquembourg de Vichte". The Napoleon Series. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
• Van Uythoven, Geert (2008). "Collaert, Jean Marie Antoine Philippe Baron de". Archived from the original on 12 March 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2013.